


Adventures in (Accidental) Field Science

by Mertiya



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Emily and Alexi are shippers on deck, Emily's dress gets ruined, For Science!, Gen, He's more competent than he thinks he is, Kid Fic, M/M, Piero tries very hard, Pirates, Rather long for a oneshot but there wasn't really any good place for chapter breaks, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 14:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11465286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: When Anton asks Piero to do one of Emily's lessons at short notice, he takes her down to the sewers for a practical lesson on river krust anatomy.  Unfortunately, a flash flood leaves the two of them trapped, and Piero finds himself in the difficult position of needing to protect Emily when he's not even sure he's competent to tutor her.





	Adventures in (Accidental) Field Science

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Natural Philosopher and the Nonlinear Terms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/870534) by [Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban). 



> Takes place a few months after the events of the first game. 
> 
> Thanks to Rastaban for headcanons and general Dishonored screaming, as well as balverine, paperclipminizer, Juri, and bauglir3 for letting me throw excerpts at them.

            Piero clicked his tongue against his teeth as he ran down the checklist of experiments that needed to be visited and tested. He had to admit that, in the wake of the recent turmoil, he had been avoiding his responsibilities with respect to his river krust larvae, and the situation was becoming rather urgent. They needed to be checked to ensure that they were neither dying nor getting dangerously close to rooting, as their secretions increased in quantity and vitriol a measurable amount at such a point, and they would likely have to be butchered with care.

            A rap at the door of the greenhouse turned out to be Anton poking his head in. “Ah, Piero,” he said, grinning in what Piero knew enough at this point to call a dangerous manner. “Good. Look, several of the buffoons on the council have been braying about asking for a report, and I tried to tell them it wasn’t a good time, but fuck if any of them listen to me, so I can’t do Emily’s morning lesson today. Can you take over?”

            “Oh, er,” replied Piero, looking down at himself doubtfully. He was already outfitted in his waterproof coat and hat and had his heavy, acid-resistant gloves tucked into a pocket. “I was about to check the river krusts. It is rather imperative that I not delay much further.”

            “Just take her to see them, then, call it a lesson in natural biology. Emily’s waiting in the schoolroom. Look, I’ve no more time, I’ll see you at lunch.”

            “But—” Piero tried, but Anton had already vanished in a dramatic swirl of coat and beard. “I do not know _how_ to teach a lesson in natural biology,” Piero grumbled at the closing door. His recent appointment to role of Royal Tutor had given him no small amount of anxiety, but though he had repeatedly protested to both Anton and Corvo that he had no qualifications, that he had in fact never even graduated from the Academy, and that he had only a single student whom he rarely felt competent to instruct even at a far more advanced level than the young Empress Emilia, he had failed entirely to convince anyone to rescind his new position. Therefore, he had taken to spending several hours prior to each lesson planning exactly what form it should take, and if Emily showed an unaccountable preference for sleeping over listening to his stammered explanations of natural phenomena, then eventually he would presumably be replaced and would no longer have to worry about it. And now Anton had cheerfully thrown him to the wolves without so much as a by-your-leave.

            Piero sighed. It would be an unorthodox lesson, to be sure, but a grasp of river krust anatomy could only be useful in the long term, he supposed. He was not quite sure in what respect—his mind grasped onto vague notions of city defense and trade, but could not settle on a single notion—but it was information, and the having of information was never a bad thing.

            Emily would need a coat and protective gloves as well. The gloves he could manage—Piero’s own hands were reasonably small and he had at one point accidentally shrunk a particular pair through an unfortunate and unexpected heat treatment—but the coat was more of a problem. Finally, he shrugged and went to ask Callista if the Empress had a rain jacket of some sort.

            He could not find Callista. Either it was her day off, or she, like Anton, had been dragged to the impromptu council meeting. Why Emily herself had escaped, probably only Corvo knew. Frowning and fidgeting nervously with a loose thread on his coat sleeve, Piero headed for the schoolroom.

            “Um, Emily?” he said, as he poked his head in. The young Empress, attired in a white dress with a strange sort of delicate lace collar, was kicking her feet against the legs of her desk. When she heard his voice, she gave a sort of groan and put her face into her arms.

            “I thought Anton was supposed to be giving me lessons today,” she mumbled, and Piero felt himself sinking further into the coat. Despite his lack of desire to perform the duties of the office of Royal Tutor, it stung to hear Emily’s obvious disdain for his abilities.

            “I-I’m afraid h-he was unexpectedly c-called away. Ah, d-do you have a r-raincoat?”

            Emily’s head came up, and she looked around. “A raincoat?” she asked, her eyes brightening as she saw what he was wearing. “Yes. What for?”

            “Um, I th-thought, well, I n-need to check on some of my experiments, and p-perhaps a practical l-lesson for once might be a b-beneficial notion.”

            Emily’s face split in a sudden grin Piero did not think he had ever seen her aim in his direction. “Yes, please!” she said instantly. “I’ll get my coat!”

            She returned in a few minutes wearing a long black coat. Piero frowned at it. Thick cloth, which was good, although he questioned the ornamental fur around the collar. What possible use could there be for such a thing on a coat intended to protect from moisture? “Have you no hood?” he asked.

            “Usually I take an umbrella,” Emily answered. “Should I get that as well?”

            “No, I do not think that would be wise. C-Come with me.” They attracted several odd stares as they made their way through the main body of the Kaldwin’s Bridge facility, and Piero felt himself shrinking down once again, but Emily seemed blithely oblivious to any scrutiny by the guards or kitchen maids. Upon reaching the upper laboratory, Piero rooted around until he found a length of heavy black protective cloth, which he carefully tucked around Emily’s head, making sure her hair was covered. Concerned that it would shift or fall off, he secured it to the bottom of the coat collar with waterproof adhesive. It could be later removed by the application of a little oil, he reasoned, and it was better than leaving her poorly protected in case of any trouble.

            Emily stood patiently while he fussed around with her outfit, but she soon started asking questions. “River krusts spit acid, don’t they?”

            “Mature ones do, b-but we will only be handling the immature form.” Probably. Certainly any of the krusts that had successfully rooted would still be juvenile and their acidic ducts mainly unformed.

            “Oh,” Emily said, sounding slightly disappointed. “What about serpents? Anton told me a story about a serpent that slept beneath the earth and whispered secrets in men’s ears. Will we see serpents?”

            Piero considered this. “Unlikely,” he finally declared. “Land serpents require sunlight in order to survive, and sea serpents are much more commonly found in the open sea.” There had been an extremely violent storm the night before, however. “I s-suppose it is technically possible that a young sea serpent might have been washed into the sewers,” he said contemplatively. “Really I ought at some point to do a proper survey of the changes in the ecology of the subsystem with strong weather.”

            “Can I adopt one if we find it?” Emily asked eagerly.

            “Um,” Piero said. “I d-do not believe that would be wise.”

            “Awwww.”

            A thought struck him. “What shoes are you wearing?”

            “I put on my rainboots when you said to get my raincoat. Is that all right?”

            “Oh good.” It would not do for her to ruin a pair of shoes. Callista, Piero thought ruefully, would be cross. He stepped back and inspected Emily critically. She was entirely outfitted in heavy, waterproof cloth. “Put these gloves on and do not take them off unless I tell you,” he instructed, handing her the shrunken pair. They still came up to her elbows, but when he told her to flex her hands, he could see that the palms were not so large that they would seriously impede her movement. At the last minute, he threw an extra length of the protective cloth around her shoulders, securing it to the outside of her coat with more adhesive. Just to be safe.

            “Do not take any of this off,” he warned. “A n-natural philosopher must always take care to be protected from all possible dangers.”

            Emily nodded seriously. “Can we go down in the sewers now?”

            Piero looked her up and down once more before pronouncing her outfit satisfactory. “Y-Yes, let us proceed.” They garnered even more stares the second time. Piero had handed Emily several vials of chemicals and at least one instrument to carry, which she was only too happy to do. Possibly a little too happy. Piero instructed her repeatedly to take care, to which she nodded seriously, so, with luck, she was only excited about the science and not about the prospect of adopting a baby sea serpent that probably did not exist and that Piero imagined no one would be in the least happy with other than Emily.

            The entrance to the sewers was guarded, and the Watch officer standing outside it raised a concerned eyebrow at the sight of Piero and Emily. “What’s going on?” she asked, with more than what Piero considered a reasonable amount of suspicion. He drew himself up to his full height, aware that this was unlikely to make him seem much more imposing, and managed, “Her Grace is to have a lesson in natural biology today. We will be s-s-studying krust larvae.”

            “Yes!” Emily said excitedly. “He’s my Royal Tutor, you know!”

            It was probably her enthusiasm that softened the woman’s concerns. “Very well, Your Grace,” she said seriously. “But have a care down there.”

            “She is wearing a full protective garment,” Piero said stiffly. “And, in any case, there are no dangers this close to the laboratory, unless the W-Watch has been extremely n-negligent.” The woman frowned at him, but stepped aside. “Th-Thank you,” Piero told her as they descended, wishing as usual that he was able to command respect the way Anton was. They probably would not even have been questioned had the Royal Physician been with them. Anton could make anything seem legitimate, but Piero had exactly the opposite talent, he thought in frustration—even perfectly reasonable acts seemed suspicious when he performed them.

            Emily practically skipped down the metal stairs towards the underground laboratory room, bursting with more questions than Piero had heard her ask in a week before. Clearly a practical demonstration was long since overdue. He would have to file this finding away for later consideration.

            To his relief, when they entered the long passageway beneath Kaldwin’s Bridge that housed the larvae, he saw that the tanks were clear of any cloudiness that might indicate the production of krust acid. As expected, then, and perhaps that meant this batch were a bit slow to mature, but certainly preferable to the alternative with the young Empress here.

            Piero retrieved his sadly too-long-abandoned lab notebook, winced when he saw the last time it had been written in, and called Emily over. “It is important to check the conditions of the experiment prior to interfering with it,” he told her. “You must learn to be methodical.”

            “Must I?” Emily asked. “Is Anton methodical?”

            “Anton is the most methodical person I have ever met,” Piero told her fervently. “I h-have learned a great deal from working with him, even in a short time.”

            Emily heaved a sigh. “Oh, well, I suppose I must, then. What will we do after being methodical?”

            “Th-Then I will show you how to extract the essences of the krusts for distillation.”

            “Essences?”

            “Their secretions. The, er, potions that they produce within themselves.”

            “You mean the acid?” Emily asked excitedly.

            “Er, no, we will be working with juvenile krusts. Greater preparations are required to work with them once they have rooted and their acid has developed.”

            “Oh, well, I suppose that’s still quite interesting,” Emily opined. “What should I do, then?”

            Piero instructed her on the basics of temperature and acidity testing, then gave her a thermometer and litmus paper and sent her to check the first batch of krusts while he himself worked on the second. The procedure was straightforward and went rapidly. He noted temperature and acid quantity of within tolerable values for all the tanks on his side, taking care to record both values and the uncertainty in their measurements. Once he had done, he went to check on the Empress and found, somewhat to his surprise, that although she had only checked half as many as he had, she had labeled them neatly with values that seemed quite reasonable. He set aside his half-formed, resigned plan of double-checking everything with some cheer and told Emily that she was doing an excellent job. She gave him a surprised, flushed smile. “I like this much more than sums,” she confessed. “Although I’d really like it if there were more things for me to touch.”

            Piero was forced to confess a certain partiality of his own nature towards work of a practical nature, although he did also enjoy the more theoretical side of things at times. It was hard to fault Emily for that. “You can certainly h-help me with the extraction procedure, as long as you are willing to take care,” he told her.

            Back at the laboratory bench, he was beginning to lay out the tools required for the vivisection of one of the small, immature larvae, when a strange noise caught his ears, a hollow rushing noise accompanied by a sudden trembling of the ground, decidedly out of place in the normally silent sewers. He looked up to find Emily cocking one head to the side as well, as if puzzled.

            “What’s that noise?” she asked. “Is it normal around here? Only it sounds like the water wheel at Kaldwin’s Bridge, almost.”

            It did. The sound of rushing water was becoming clearer by the moment. _The river_. He had not heard such a sound in many years, but it had been an annual experience when he was a child in Potterstead. Every year, at the end of the winter, the ice floes in the mountains would melt and the river, which had slowed to a trickle, would fill again with a sudden roar and a rush, the only warning a trembling in the ground near the banks and—that noise.

            _Had quite a bit of rain last night_ , Anton had said conversationally at breakfast. And Piero himself had woken to a thunderous crack and the noise of rain like incendiaries pounding against the tin roof of Kaldwin’s Bridge. He had almost believed himself back in his old warehouse outside the Hound Pits Pub with the Watch assaulting the shutters; if it had not been for the warmth of Anton, sleeping shirtless at his side, he might have spent a good few minutes under that impression, so violent was the storm. Such unusual weather might easily have disrupted the flow of the river somewhere upstream.

            No sooner had the conclusion formed than the obvious next one forced itself to his attention. He looked to the ladder they had come down to enter the sewer. It was all the way at the other end of the long table and just around a bend in the tunnel, a good thirty meters from their current location. As he looked, he caught a glimpse of foaming green just beyond.

            They could not reach the ladder in time, Piero’s mind told him, and it helpfully provided their fate if they were caught in the center of the sewer passage—picked up and brutally swept away, ultimately dashed against a wall, bodies split open like krusts opened by a hammer, dead of their injuries if they had not already drowned before ever reaching the obstacle.

            There was an alcove in the tunnel, perhaps five meters along the wall, where Piero kept extra tanks and other supplies. There was a ladder set into the wall there, beneath a set of shelves where he kept some provisions, high enough to be shielded from the damp and from any possible contamination by krust effluence. As the great wall of water swept towards them, Piero lifted Emily bodily and swung her towards it. He was not a strong man, and some part of him was surprised at how light she felt in his arms.

            With Emily’s startled cry still hanging in the air behind them, with the foaming torrent booming at their backs, he took three long strides and managed to throw them into the alcove as the wave hit. “Hold on,” he choked, hoping that the Empress could hear him over the roaring of the flood, and then they were slammed back against the ladder.

            Piero took the main force of it with palms and knees, shielding Emily with his body, and clutched at the iron supports driven into the wall. For an instant, he thought he had missed, and then his wild clawing caught cold metal. He felt Emily’s arms tighten around his chest, and then they were submerged. The freezing chill of the water stole the last of the air remaining in Piero’s lungs, and he was choking.

            He clung to the bars beneath his hands as the waters sucked around him, but his chest was burning, and the fire was spreading upwards. The white haze across his vision wavered like smoke. _Beneath his feet spread the slats of metal of his workshop. He must find the jack, but he cannot see it. Cold metal beneath his hands, but he cannot find the jack and without the jack they will die, the smoke will curl into their lungs, and all the Watch will have to do will be to crack open the shell of the workshop around them and pluck their bodies out like pearls from ruined river krusts._

            Then the water was receding, sucking away backwards, still with frightening force. His head broke the surface, and he choked on air, clinging to the ladder for dear life. The air could not pass the water he had inhaled, and he coughed desperately. Was it possible to drown after you had left the water? He desperately did not want to find out.

            With the same swiftness it had arrived, the water ebbed, the sudden strength of it fading as well. Piero felt his legs floating, unanchored; then that too subsided, and he was standing against the wall of the ladder, his feet on the mud, with Emily between him and the wall. And he still could not breathe.

            Choking, he staggered backwards and fell onto his backside, coughing and heaving. His stomach turned itself over, and he retched, gasped, retched again, bringing up quantities of liquid that glittered green-blue in the dim light. He tasted salt on his tongue, and the light flickered, eerie silence falling all around him. _The ceiling above peels away as a fire rises sharp in the back of his mind, and there is no hewn tunnel about him; instead there is a rough cave, worn smooth by the passage of the sea over the course of centuries. Pale bone glimmers in one corner, a skeletal hand clutching at a trifold charm that is worn till its ends are sharp points._

            _Was there a moment when you considered abandoning the child?_ A high, wailing noise pierces the darkness, the cry of a blind idiot thing staggering in death throes. _Her weight could have dragged you down, and yet it did not even enter into your calculations. Had you been a moment slower, both would have been swallowed whole by the thirsty water_.

            The Outsider regards him from the ceiling, blank black eyes glittering with the same green-blue reflection as the water. Piero has no response to his statement except to say, “I was not a moment slower,” and the Outsider grins in response.

            “Or did you know that without Emily you would not survive?” he asks, and pain splits Piero’s world in half.

~

            When he swam slowly back to consciousness, it was to the taste of mud mingled with a familiar cloying sweetness that coated the back of his throat like sludge. He groaned, turned to the side, and threw up again, shuddering with the effort and the pain in his stomach and ribs.

            “Are you feeling better?” Emily was crouched beside him, her long raincoat ripped up one side to expose the white dress she had not changed out of. It was green up to several inches above the hem, and what had been white stockings, also dyed a sickly green, poked out over the top of her laced-up boots.

            “By the Void,” Piero moaned, holding his head. “What happened?” He was propped up against the muddy brick wall of the sewer alcove. A drained vial lay near his open hand, and, he now realized, everything was illuminated with a clear blue light. He looked around and found the vessel of trans that had been carried clumsily across the room and set onto a heap of mud above the water, which still covered the floor in erratic puddles.

            “There was a wall of water,” Emily explained. “You got me in here and stopped us from being swept away, but then you had one of your fits. I put something in your mouth to stop you from biting your tongue, the way Anton does, and I found some of your old elixir tucked away in a corner. I thought it might help.”

            “Th-Thank you,” Piero stammered. “That was, um, well done, Emily. Very well done.”

            She smiled brightly at him. “I was very careful when I brought the oil over,” she told him seriously, “but I thought we might need to be able to see, and the water washed out all the other lights in the tunnel as far down as I could see, except for some patches further down where the walls are glowing. What is that?”

            “Moss, I expect.” Piero leaned his head back against the wall wearily. “Moss contaminated by trans can incorporate the luminescence into its own system.”

            “Ooh,” Emily breathed.

            Piero lay still for a moment longer, then, with a groan, pulled himself slowly to his feet, one hand grimly laid against the wall for support. “We had better see about getting out,” he said.

            “Um,” said Emily. “I think that might be a problem.”

            As he turned the corner, Piero saw why. The sheer violence of the water had left little in its wake, and it must have struck one of the tunnel supports in its passage. Where the ladder and exit should have been, the walkway ended instead in a twisting tangle of metal beneath a cascade of mud. Water still trickled through some hole beneath, but the exit had been buried entire.

            “Oh dear,” Piero said. His glasses were muddy, distorting his vision with little speckles in odd places. He took them off and struggled to clean them with an equally muddy shirt. Put them back on. Nothing had changed. The exit remained resolutely and entirely unreachable. There was no chance of escape that way. “Oh dear,” he said limply again.

            “What shall we do?” Emily asked. To his relief, she did not sound frightened, merely curious.

            “I—suppose we must make our way in the other direction,” Piero replied, the answering forming itself on his lips before it had even fully formed in his brain. “There will be another exit some way down. I do not know the tunnels beneath Kaldwin’s Bridge terribly well, but I do not imagine the next can be that far away. Fortunately the walkway is largely intact.”

            “So we get to go deeper into the sewers?” Emily sounded excited.

            Piero frowned. Not having to assuage her anxiety was beneficial in that he had no idea how he would have done so, but being too cavalier could also lead to significant negative consequences. “Yes, but, Your Grace, I _must_ caution you,” he warned. “There are dangers. Without the lights, it will be difficult for us to see them coming.”

            “What sort of dangers?” Emily asked, her excitement blunting beneath a more serious tone.

            “Primarily adult river krusts,” Piero told her. “They sense vibrations in the ground and will defend themselves. Violently. Their acid can strip a man’s skin from his bones. We should also keep an eye out for any more damage to the walkway. The water is not flowing so fast anymore that drowning is a real concern, but a fall could still be dangerous.” He sighed. At least the plague was over, so they would not have to worry about running afoul of Weepers.

            “I suppose we’d better check around for supplies before we leave,” Emily suggested, and Piero nodded in approval.

            “Y-Yes. A fine idea.”

            The water had reached even the shelf above the ladder, but fortunately Piero had stored most of the supplies in waterproof containers to protect them from the damp conditions. They were able to find several tins of jellied eels and two filled waterskins, as well as a single untouched vial of Piero’s old anti-plague elixir. Piero was certain there had been more provisions, but they had likely been swept away, judging by the locations of the ones they were able to find. They tucked what remained into Piero’s large coat pockets—Emily’s coat had none, which both of them found to be a gross oversight.

            “I’ll have to talk to the tailor next week,” Emily told Piero. “Pockets are ever so useful.”

            “Yes,” Piero said with feeling. “One should always have at least two. Preferably more.”

            A final search turned up a bundle of old watchlights that Piero had not recalled having stored here, which had in all likelihood been bundled up from the Hound Pits location without being noticed. The tallow-soaked rushes were hardly a substitute for a proper gas mantle lantern, but at least they provided a low, clear light by which to see, at least once Piero had succeeded in illuminating the first one via a judicious, controlled explosion with a drop or two of trans.

            Traveling through the sewers, especially in the wake of the flood, was manifestly disconcerting. The dim illumination of the watchlight was quickly swallowed up by the darkness all around, but their breathing and footsteps sounded loud, echoing down the sewer passage and returning twisted and distorted, as if something else were following them. Emily appeared unbothered, but Piero himself was frankly spooked. In the absence of any visual stimuli, the darkness at the side of his vision seemed to writhe with strange shapes that put him in mind of swarming insects or wriggling maggots.

            It was hard for him to focus on where he was with such things crawling at the edge of his perception, but fear held him to the present enough to keep Emily from getting too far ahead of him. The Empress evinced no fear, which was, on the one hand, beneficial, as Piero would have had no idea how to handle it if she had, but, on the other, still a concern from a safety perspective.

            He had no idea how long they had been walking for, his sense of time stolen by the experience of the flickering torchlight playing over what appeared to be the same section of stone tunnel over and over again, the only change in their view being the occasional modification in shape of the patches of dimly-glowing moss illuminated by the edge of the watchlights’ radiance. Surely they ought to have found a way up by now. Piero was not intimately familiar with the construction of the sewers, especially in the Kaldwin’s Bridge area, but surely some form of maintenance was necessary? The only reason for the metal walkway they were on was to ease traversal, but traversal was not much use if humans could not reach it.

            “Look!” Emily caught his elbow and pointed ahead. There was a bend in the tunnel ahead, picked out in glimmering torchlight, and it took Piero a moment to realize that not all of the light illuminating it was from their own watchlights. Either they had reached an area that had not been devastated by the wave, or there were more human beings ahead, and Piero was of the opinion that neither of these were necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, he was only too eager to stop feeling as if they were alone in the center of a foul, hostile nothingness, and some brighter lights could only help with that.

            In his haste, he forgot to keep his movements light; he forgot to move slowly. They had almost reached the sharp twist in the tunnel when the lights they were carrying played over three telltale bulges on the wall above. Piero’s heart leaped into his throat, and the sudden hissing rattle told him all he needed to know.

            “Run! Emily, _run_!” He threw an arm up, pulling his heavy raincoat up as an impromptu shield against the acid. Emily’s footsteps clattered against the metal, and Piero reached out and pulled her sideways against him so that they were both running together, and his body and raincoat were interposed between her and the river krusts. Something struck his shoulder, and he staggered; liquid splattered the ground around them. The strong, acrid stench of krust acid rose around them.

            They stumbled around the bend in the corridor. If there was another colony, Piero knew, they were going to die, and he, at least, would deserve it. After all his warnings to Emily, he had failed to pay attention at the very moment it was most imperative. But the rattling noise died away as they took another few steps, and Piero gasped, leaning over his knees, trying to catch his breath. “That—th-that is wh-why you must t-take care in the sewers,” he managed breathlessly. “We are—f-fortunate that there was a deviation in the t-tunnel.”

            “Are you all right?” Emily asked.

            “Ah, um, fine,” Piero managed. “I just need a m-moment. You are unharmed?”

            Emily nodded. “I’m fine. I’ve never seen anything _like_ that.” Her eyes were round, although she still did not sound afraid. Piero was still uncertain as to whether that was a good or a bad thing. He started to rise, automatically reaching to adjust the collar of his coat, which would need to be carefully rinsed, since it must be coated in krust acid at this point, when he felt moisture against the bare skin of his hand. He had no more than a moment to register the feeling before the pain began.

            Piero had been burned once before by krust acid. During one of his first attempts at vivisection, his hand had slipped and he had spattered his upper wrist with a few droplets. Even such a small exposure had been deeply painful, and he had taken great care not to repeat the experience, but he had not forgotten the sudden hot ache that had speared through the two points of contact. Now that same pain surged sharply through the whole side and back of his hand.

            With a cry, he dropped to his knees, desperately inserting the thumb of one glove beneath the contaminated one so that he could turn it inside out, flipping it off. “Get back!” he snapped to Emily, who had moved forward as if to try and help. “Do _not_ approach.” He gritted his teeth against the pain, then slid to the edge of the walkway and submerged his hand in the mucky water at the side. The pain subsided slightly, and he moved the affected appendage back and forth to flush the acid off.

            The next step was to ensure there would be no more such contamination, which could be difficult. It was clear there was still acid on his raincoat—unsurprisingly, as it had borne the brunt of the colony’s attack. But he could not afford another burn. After a moment, he dipped his left hand into the sewer water, waiting patiently to see if the left glove had been compromised as well.

            “Master Joplin?”

            “Just stay back,” he told Emily wearily. “I am—I will be fine.” Something of a lie, that, but pointless to say anything else. There was no sense of moisture on his left hand. Good. With a great deal of care, he reached up and began to undo the fastenings of his coat. With only one hand available, the other stinging horribly and still under the water, it was no easy feat, but he eventually managed to shrug it off.

            “Emily, please bring the watchlight over.” The one she held was still lit, but Piero had dropped his own sometime during the nightmarish flight from the colony of river krusts.

            “What happened?” Emily asked in a hushed voice as she did as he asked.

            “No closer,” Piero told her when she was within a few feet. He laid the coat out carefully. The light glinted off of green across and beneath the collar as well as long sweeps of green down the sides and back. It was a miracle he had not burned his neck as well. “My glove was torn at some point,” he said steadily. “Krust acid exposure to the back of the hand and up the wrist. It is not a pleasant experience.”

            Emily swallowed. “But you’ll be okay, right?”

            “Likely,” Piero replied. “Krust acid is exceedingly painful, and the burns can be severe, but the area of exposure was relatively small. Still, I should like to get back and have Anton look at it.”

            “Yes,” Emily agreed, nodding. “What about your coat?”

            Piero pulled a face as he lifted it carefully with his gloved hand. “Covered in acid, which is unfortunate. I will try to clean it off, as we cannot afford to come across another colony without some form of protection, but I would also rather not have any of the acid go down the back of my neck.”

            “Yes, that sounds like it would be good,” Emily agreed.

            Piero thought distractedly that this would be a good occasion for a lesson in the production, distillation, and mechanism of action of krust acid, but his right hand had begun to tremble, and he could not gather the necessary focus for such a lecture. Instead, he merely sighed and carefully lifted the coat until he could reach into the interior pockets. At this point, it became necessary to take his hand back out of the water. It was still stinging; the trembling had become worse.

            “Emily, can you hold a few items for me?”

            She nodded, moving closer; he gingerly passed her one waterskin and the tins of jellied eels as well as a container of ointment he had fortunately been keeping in the coat rather than with the rest of his supplies. The other waterskin he opened awkwardly with his teeth, grimacing at the taste, and poured about half of it across the back of his right hand. More than he would have liked to use, but he did not know how long they would be trapped for, and he could not afford to be too badly hampered by the injury. “Do you happen to have a dry handkerchief on you?”

            “Let me see.” Emily carefully set the supplies on the tunnel floor and undid the front of her raincoat. Her white dress, made from some kind of delicate cloth, was absorbing tracks of the river effluence upward in long green streaks, like a piece of paper taking up dye. Piero catalogued the likely mental reactions from her various protectors, sighed, shivered, and stopped. There was little he could do about such frivolities while they were still, in truth, in danger of losing their lives. “Yes, here you go.”

            “Thank you,” Piero said, taking the small square of cloth that she held out to him. “Now if you would not mind opening that jar of ointment, I would be much obliged.”

            It took her a moment to manage, but soon enough she held it out as well. Awkwardly, Piero received it and, setting it beside him, began to spread some of the ointment across the back of his hand and his wrist. The pain flared at the pressure, then faded slightly as the ointment began to work.  He bound the handkerchief around it as well as he could with one hand, then returned his attention to his coat.

            Before he could determine the optimal method for cleaning off the coat with no danger of another exposure to the acid, the light shifted. “Thank you, Emily,” he said.

            “Um,” said Emily. “Oh. That’s not me.”

            “What?” Piero looked up to see that, indeed, the light moving down the passage had the characteristic bright white glow of an arc-lamp; it could not have been made by their paltry watchlights. The Watch?

            The carrier of the arc-lamp turned the corner. It was not decidedly not a member of the Watch. It was someone wearing a wide-brimmed cloth hat and a worn, heavy overcoat splashed with a number of dubious stains. Piero licked his lips, then regretted it at the foul taste that his tongue encountered. “Emily,” he said quietly. “Perhaps you had better put your coat back on.”

            She nodded and did as he suggested. Piero got awkwardly to his feet, trying to decide what to do. There were, of course, numerous reasons for men and women to brave the Dunwall sewers, as he and Emily could attest, but his experiences in Pearl Street, if nothing else, had taught him that more of those reasons were morally or legally questionable than were not. He did not like to think of what some of his less savory former acquaintances might do if they realized who Emily was.

            “Ho there!” called the person. A woman’s voice, cheerful and almost careless. Piero was not certain if that was more or less concerning. He was also uncertain as to what the correct response to such a greeting was.

            “H-Hello?” he hazarded after a moment.

            The woman with the arc-lamp stumped up to them, her footsteps oddly uneven against the floor. “Heard ye talkin’ from down the tunnel,” she explained, raising the lamp. Its bright radiance lit up a pair of tattered, patchwork trousers, once side of which ended in a normal boot, the other of which was tied off about halfway to where the knee ought to be. Dark wood protruded from beneath it. Two shrewd, grey eyes peered out of a craggy, weatherbeaten face beneath the wide hat. She held out a hand. “Name’s Nan,” she explained.

            “Oh, er,” said Piero. He looked down at his own hands. “I-I am afraid th-that I cannot—that is—it w-would perhaps not be entirely safe were I to—I apologize.”

            “I’m Amy, and this is, um, this is my Uncle,” Emily supplied. She shoved one of her gloves into her pocket and reached out to take Nan’s hand. She glanced to the side at Piero.

            “Peter,” Piero’s mouth said, and he let out a sudden breath. “W-We, I…” Was it safe to say that he was a natural philosopher? Prevarication did not come naturally to him.

            “We were trying to look for the river krusts, but we got trapped when the sewers flooded,” Emily said composedly.

            “Seems ye found some krusts all right.” Nan’s eyes went from Piero’s coat to his bandaged-up hand. “Them burns can be right nasty.”

            “Y-Yes, the acid is of a remarkable strength…” Piero trailed off, aware that he had been about to start lecturing and stopping in some confusion. “I—that is—the pearls can fetch some s-small coin.”

            “More than small, I’d say.” She chewed thoughtfully on something, then spat to the side. “If ye can kill ’em, but youse ain’t got much in the way o’ killin’ tools, have ye?”

            “We lost them in the flood,” Emily replied, moving imperceptibly closer to Piero. “I don’t know if they would have worked, though.”

            “W-We have not, um, much experience. M-My—Ant—”

            “My dad said it could work but he couldn’t come,” Emily interrupted. “I guess we’d have had some trouble.”

            Piero closed his mouth before he could say anything else and nodded. Nan flashed them a grin that glittered gold in the light of the arc-lamp. “Aye,” she said. “I’ll bet ye would.” She stumped over and prodded at Piero’s raincoat with her wooden leg. “Coat’s a lost cause,” she pronounced.

            Inclined to agree but concerned about losing his main protective garment, Piero dithered. Emily inched closer to him again. “It s-s-saved our l-lives,” he settled on eventually.

            “Yep,” Nan agreed. “Would’ve been a nasty death, too. Pretty impressive coat.”

            Was that suspicion in her voice? In truth, Piero’s coat had been treated with a particular preparation he had devised himself in order to do exactly what it had done—be a last line of defense against a full-scale river krust assault; however, it was not impossible that an ordinary waterproof garment could have shielded them to the necessary degree. Piero said nothing, merely shrugging instead.

            “Well, ye may as well follow me then,” Nan said, shrugging. “Ye’ll be wantin’ to make yer way out the sewers, but the next exit’s right far.”

            “Thank you,” Emily said, relieving Piero of the necessity of saying it himself. He was not entirely certain that he wanted to follow Nan, but there seemed little excuse to avoid it, so, after one last regretful glance back at his coat, he took Emily’s hand—hoping that that was the correct behavior—and followed Nan as she stomped off down the passageway.

            A few minutes and several forks later, they saw wavering firelight around the next bend. Emily moved a little closer to Piero, but other than that gave no sign of concern. Piero, in turn, tried to hide the tremor in his right hand.

            “Well and here we are,” Nan announced as they rounded the corner. Piero cringed involuntarily as the three women around the fire looked up from the bottle they had been passing around. “Isn’t this cozy.”

            “Who’ve ye brought, then, Nan?” asked the woman in the middle, who was wearing a red kerchief tied around her hair. She flashed yellowed teeth at Piero and Emily.

            “Some as call theyselves fierce krust hunters,” Nan grinned. “Come on, loves, have a seat. We’ve enough food for youse, I believe.”

            One of the other women murmured something, but her neighbor elbowed her and she quieted down. Nervously, Piero attempted to maneuver himself and Emily onto one of the moss-encrusted barrels that the women were using for seats around the fire. It was damp beneath him, and he tried not to imagine the sorts of fluids that were now seeping onto his body. Emily, at least, would be protected by her raincoat.

            The little Empress sat beside him, appearing far more at ease than he did, although she scooted slightly closer to him. Scraps of roasted meat were passed over to them, juicy and heavily salted, followed by a waterskin that did not—as Piero discovered as he took a long swallow—contain water. He sputtered at the burn of strong liquor.

            “What’s wrong?” Emily asked immediately.

            “I’m f-fine,” gasped Piero, as the four women laughed uproariously. “Perhaps you had better drink from our waterskin, however.”

            “You don’t think as the little miss might like a taste?” Nan asked with a lazy smile. “I were drinkin’ such stuff at her age.”

            “I-I th-think her f-f-father might object. Th-Thank you, though.”

            “What is it? Is it ale?” Emily asked with interest.

            “R-Rather s-stronger, I should think,” Piero told her, as he passed the waterskin back to Nan.

            “Me own recipe,” she told him proudly, and Piero managed another stammered thanks.

            He let Emily drink her fill from their waterskin and took a mouthful himself to take the edge off of the thirst, before taking a swallow of his elixir. It would not do as well as his nerve tonic, but it might help stave off the convulsions, at least.

            “Ye knows that the plague’s over, do ye not?” asked one of the women curiously.

            “Ah—i-it is only—”

            “It’s good for hangovers,” Emily said rapidly. “Uncle Peter gets awful bad ones.”

            “Sokolov’s stuff’s better for that,” replied the woman, but the sharp curiosity, at least, had vanished from her voice. “But take what ye can get, as I always say.”

            They sat around the fire for an indeterminate amount of time, the women carrying on a conversation about nothing in particular; Dunwall gossip and weather featured heavily. Piero started having difficulty following the subject. At first, he thought he was merely growing sleepy, but when he blinked to find that the fire had burned to embers in what felt like a moment or two, he knew it was not just that. He shivered, abruptly cold. Beside him, Emily shifted as well.

            “I’m very tired,” she said softly. “Is it late?”

            Piero shook his head and then changed the gesture for a shrug, which might be less confusing. There would have been no way for him to tell the time even if he had not lost some indeterminate amount of time before after the flood and then again, just now. “P-Perhaps you should try to get some rest,” he suggest.

            “I can’t sleep sitting up,” Emily informed him.

            Piero looked over at the piled packs the women were leaning against, wondering whether they had any particular plans for sleep, or whether they were even planning on it, but Emily certainly needed rest. “Perhaps—lie down?” he suggested. “Your raincoat should protect you from the cold and the damp.” Emily pulled a face, but nodded. “You, um, can put your head in my lap,” Piero hazarded, reasoning that, damp as his legs were, it was better than putting her head on the metal of the walkway. “I shall ask our hosts whether they will be moving on soon, but, for now, rest,” Piero finished, speaking with a voice that was surprisingly steady of an interaction he was not at all certain he had the confidence to carry out.

            Emily yawned and sighed. Tucking her raincoat beneath her, she curled up on her side with her head in Piero’s lap. He let his hands hover in midair for a few minutes before gently resting one on her shoulder and letting the other fall to his side. She was a small bundle of warmth; with her eyes shut, she looked like any other child. With her hair matted in drying trails and her face grubby with dirt, she could have been one of the urchins Piero had sometimes given a spare coin to when he was particularly strapped for equipment on Pearl Street.

            Piero did not like children in the abstract, but his interactions with Emily had always been pleasant, at least when they did not involve awkwardness with her governess. Still, finding himself, for lack of a better word, her caretaker, was worrying in the extreme. He was not even certain he was competent to be her tutor; he certainly did not feel competent to care for her, even under ideal circumstances. These were not ideal circumstances.

            He knew that he needed to ask the women where they were going, but no matter how he tried, a strange dizzy lightness seemed to fill him up and force his mouth shut around the words. It did not help that his limbs had grown heavy while he was considering, and his eyelids kept fluttering. Perhaps a short nap would improve matters. At one level, he was aware that that was a dangerous thought to act on, but sheer weariness made a compelling counterargument to concern. He would just shut his eyes for a moment…

            He is surely asleep, and yet he can hear the crackle of the fire, feel its warmth at his front, and he can hear the voices of the women as clear as ringing bells, although something about them seems off; they have a peculiar, resonant quality that does not seem to match the expected acoustics.

_Should we kill him?_

_Nah, whoever he is, killing him will only upset the little miss. He’s a fool, he’ll be no trouble._

_Who is he anyway?_

_Servant, mebbe._

_He don’t seem like a servant?_

_It don’t matter. All we need to do is take the little miss back to Lizzie. She won’t make no fuss as long as she thinks it’s all on the straight an’ narrow. Be easier that way._

The fire’s warmth has changed to a burning heat, and his body is frozen. No matter how much he wills his hands to move, his head to move, nothing happens, as if something has cut off the signals from brain to spine to limbs. And perhaps, he thinks with a strange cold clarity, it is better this way. He wants nothing more than to take Emily and run, but if he were to do that, they would either lose their way once again, or, more likely, he would be killed and abandoned in the sewers as Emily was taken to “Lizzie.” Frozen here against his natural inclination gives him a few moments to collect himself.

            Their best chance will be to wait until they have been conducted out of the sewers, especially if their would-be captors remain unaware of his particular intellectual bent. If only that is enough. Even through the chill clarity pervading his mind right now, Piero feels nausea roiling in his stomach at the thought of Emily being taken again.

            He woke with a jerk and a gasp, mobility returning to his limbs in an instant, so quickly, indeed, that he wondered if his previous paralysis had been wholly natural in origin. Emily stirred in his lap and murmured, “Corvo?”

            Piero did not know how to respond. He thought that Corvo, or even Anton, might have stroked her hair, but he was afraid of waking her, and he did not know if such a gesture would be appropriate or welcomed. Instead, he merely sat still, resting a hand on her shoulder, trying to come to a decision about what to do. Across the fire, the women sat together quietly, as if they had never been conversing, and Piero momentarily wondered if he had truly dreamed the whole thing. Something niggled at the back of his mind, though, the feeling of chilly cold water and lurking blue nearby—the feeling that always followed him when Corvo entered the room. No, he decided, it had not been only a dream. One of the women sitting across from him was a witch.

            Emily needed to be informed. He could not expect her to take care of herself if she were not in possession of all the facts. He rather suspected that she, like he, had had her suspicions of Nan from the first, but suspicions and confirmation were not the same. Keeping an eye on the women across the fire, he bent over Emily and shook her shoulder lightly. Her eyes opened immediately.

            Piero licked his lips and murmured rapidly, “When you have a chance to reach the Watch, run immediately and don’t look back.”

            Her eyes widened marginally, but she only inclined her head fractionally, clamping her lips down over whatever question she clearly wanted to ask. Piero looked up and across at the women. The rising heat from the fire interposed between them made their forms waver and elongate as if seen through water. He stared for a moment, then moved his eyes up to the dark nothingness above them and spoke, “I w-w-wonder wh-when y-y-you were p-planning to l-leave?”

            Movement drew his eyes back down. Nan was standing and stretching. “Now be as good a time as any, I guess,” she said affably. _Nah, whoever he is, killing him will only upset the little miss. He’s a fool, he’ll be no trouble._ It was definitely Nan who had said that. _A fool, am I?_ Piero thought in frustration. _I’ll show you who I am._ The old familiar burst of anger cleared the fear from in his chest somewhat, and he rose as well, helping Emily to her feet.

            She hewed close to him as they found themselves in the middle of the group of women. “There be no krusts down this way,” Nan told them. “Ill luck if ye’re still wantin’ to collect them pearls, but better luck if ye’re not wantin’ yer skin stripped off.” Several of the women chuckled. Emily laughed as well, a little hesitantly; Piero did not.

            As they walked through the sewers, a headache grew and blossomed behind Piero’s eyes. The women murmured among themselves and occasionally spoke with Emily, who either felt at ease or had no difficulty in cultivating that impression even when it was not correct. Piero tamped down on the pain in his head. It was not the rising of the fever this time, but a prickling needle at his temple that seemed to follow Nan’s location.

            The two women walking beside him and Emily were carrying a large, heavy crate between them from which Piero could hear emanating the occasional sound of glassware shifting very gently. Nan and the other woman were each hung around with a number of oddly-shaped bundles, and Piero was forced to wonder how they were managing to balance all of it. At one point, the woman in the red kerchief stumbled slightly, and one of the bundles threatened to slide over the side of the rail. Nan made a sudden, jerky gesture, and a little bright nail of pain entered Piero’s forehead just over his left eye. He tried to disguise the wince, but could not stop himself from closing his eyes; once he had opened them again, the cargo had steadied.

            An almost interminable amount of time later, they finally reached a ladder leading upwards. Piero, heartily ready to be quit of the sewers, breathed a single sigh of relief, although he knew that he and Emily were by no means safe yet. He rather hoped that they would boost Emily up the ladder first, but they did not; she was sent up after Nan but before Piero and the rest of the women.

            Emerging into the fresh air, Piero could not help but take in a long, deep breath. It was early evening, although he would have been equally unsurprised to find that it was high noon or midnight, so thoroughly had he lost his sense of time. They had emerged near the banks of the Wrenhaven, in some district Piero did not immediately recognize, and one or two stars were already rising, their little white pinpricks of light shimmering in the sky above and the water below.

            The dark bulk of a long, low craft was visible against the clear blue twilight, and it was to this vessel that Nan began to usher all of them. “We can give youse and the little miss a lift wherever ye may be going, if ye’d like,” she offered affably, and Piero could only nod and glance sideways at Emily, who stood perfectly still, watching the proceedings intently. All she needed now was a momentary distraction.

            “M-May I h-help you l-l-l-load your cargo?” he managed to spit out, although it was difficult to form the words.

            One of the other women sniggered, and Piero felt his ears burning, but Nan gave him a generous shrug and waved an arm. “If ye like.”

            He positioned himself between the women and the boat, which allowed him to briefly inspect what was being passed to him as he settled it in the craft. The first bundles were primarily jars of rare herbs. There was also a box full of objects that rolled and rattled—probably pearls.

            “Careful with this one,” said one of the women, handing him a heavy cylindrical canister that he recognized from the red wax nozzle as some form of trans, though how pure it was, he could not tell; it was hidden within the opaque glass shielding it from view. He settled it and turned back, only to be given a crate he could hear glass shifting inside of. Acting on a hunch, he set it atop the others and maneuvered himself until he could remove the top and see inside. A number of little vials were settled securely within.           

            Bending over the cargo, Piero fumbled as if to secure it, but his hands were working quickly, and his mind was working quicker still as he scanned the chemicals available. His eye caught a glint of red, and he unstoppered the vial in question. Immediately, red vapor wafted into the air above it. Piero bit his lip briefly as he considered. Emily had not yet entered the boat; risking a glance up, he saw that she was hanging several feet back on the dock as the other women loaded, not quite looking as if she were trying to get away. The other women were between him and her, and there was a large pile of cargo as yet unloaded.

            It should be safe—for Emily at least—he calculated, if he introduced the red fuming nitric into the trans, as long as he was careful to add no more than a drop. As long as he did not ignite the entire canister of oil; that would likely be the end of all of them. There might be one or two scraps of wood from the boat left, but that would certainly be all.

            Piero stoppered the fragile vial and slipped it out of the crate, tucking it into his belt for ease of access. Then he deliberately opened the spigot on the side of the extra trans, letting a reasonably generous amount pool in the bottom of the boat. Everything had acquired a surreal, dream-like quality. He did not think he had ever before put himself in quite so much danger quite so deliberately. He did not like to trust in his luck to this extent, but he did not feel that he had a choice. He could hardly let them take Emily; quite apart from the fact that having the Empress kidnapped _again_ would be detrimental to the city’s morale at a critical period, apart even from the fact that, technically, she was a child and under his care, which Piero understood to mean a certain amount of responsibility, albeit one he had little experience in handling—he liked Emily. She was intelligent, brave, resourceful. She did not deserve to be forced into yet another unwanted captivity.

            Whatever his reasons, this was a mad thing for him to be doing. Piero knew that and knew that Anton would be yelling at him to stop if he were here; knew, too, that Anton would do precisely the same thing if he were in this situation. As if Anton had worn a groove of bravery for Piero’s feet to follow, it was that thought that pushed him to crack the little vial at his belt and tip several drops over into the growing pool of trans before him.

            The red twinkled in the air as it fell, and Piero flung himself backward with one sleeve across his face just as the heat and light and sound caught him. Noise roared in his ears, and now everything was red. The next moment it was as if a switch had been flipped; red shifted to blue, gravity to weightlessness, and Piero was floating in silence, the water beneath and the sky above; the stars and their reflections mingling until he could not tell which way was up and which way was down.

            Gravity returned in a rush, and he was barely able to gasp in a breath before his back hit the water, the impact driving most of the air back out again. Piero flailed desperately against the chill of the current tugging at him. It was fortunate he had lost his coat: the heavy, treated cloth would have dragged him under almost immediately. As it was, he was barely able to get his head above the water and gulp in a breath that was at least primarily air. Although his vision was blurry, the breath helped; he was able to kick his legs feebly and right himself slowly.

            His head was aching, but he did not think he was badly injured; his luck, then, _had_ held. Piero was too tired to feel relief, but certainly his breathing eased slightly. Although the dusk was tinting towards night, he could still clearly see the smoke smudging at the skyline over what was presumably the wreckage of the boat. There was not likely to be a great deal of it left.

            Piero was not a strong swimmer, but the river in this area was sluggish, if cold, and he was able to make his way to the bank, trying to stay low and hidden within the reeds at the edge. He could hear shouts from further down the river, Nan’s strident voice yelling orders, and he hoped that meant that Emily had taken the opportunity to run. Surely it would not be difficult for her to find a member of the Watch who could escort her safely back to Dunwall Tower. He felt sudden hope rising sharp in his chest, although his breath was still rough and loud in his ears—and then he came out of the reeds and walked right into one of the women he had been trying to escape. She was holding a pistol.

            “C’mon out then,” she said. “Don’t think Nan’s best pleased with yer. Stroke of bleeding luck to run across the little miss like that in the underground, and this ain’t what she wanted out of it.”

            Emily had escaped, then. Piero’s head was a mess of conflicting emotions. Part of him wanted to feel relief, another part was suddenly experiencing icy, paralyzing fear, but there was a haze of total exhaustion over both of those parts, muddying them into a confused, tangled ball.

            Slowly, his muscles protesting, he waded out of the shallow mud and stood in front of the woman who had found him. It seemed as if he ought to say something, as if he ought to beg, but his throat felt closed off, voice silent, and the fearful pounding in his ears was very far away through the exhaustion.           

            The pistol was level with his forehead. Piero was very cold. Would she take him back to Nan, or would she just shoot him here? They would likely not find his body, either way. Anton would not even know that he was dead. The thought of Anton searching an empty city for a dead man made his stomach lurch in a way he did not entirely understand.

            “Ain’t yer Sokolov’s latest?” asked a curious voice from the other side of the pistol, and Piero blinked and squinted. All he could see beyond was a red kerchief. He managed a dazed nod, although the question seemed to have come out of nowhere, and he could barely understand what the correct reaction was. “Thought I recognized yer earlier, I’ve seen ye round Kaldwin’s Bridge. Ah well.” The pistol lowered. “Shift yerself,” the woman holding it told him. “Anton did me a good turn once. Get on with ye, Nan’ll not know.” He stared at her; her words did not make any sense. His brain simply could not comprehend what had just happening. “Get on,” the woman repeated, and she reached out and shoved him along the riverbank.

            This time, Piero’s feet condescended to carry him in the indicated direction. He staggered off through the growing darkness. He did not think that his limbs had ever felt so leaden before; he had made it perhaps ten feet towards the lights of central Dunwall when he stumbled and fell against the low stone wall that ran along the bank of the Wrenhaven. Fever clawed at the base of his skull, and he shivered, pressing himself back against the embankment. The tremors that ran through his limbs grew stronger, and then the lights ahead shifted with a jerk; his head was pressed down against his chest where an instant ago it had been raised.

            _You are not safe yet_ , he told himself; somehow he managed to straighten himself up once again. The next objective was to put one foot in front of the other. He did so. It was unpleasant. He did it again. It continued to be unpleasant. Piero sighed. The lights got closer, jerkily, painfully, and slowly.

            Finally, he saw one of the members of the Watch standing, backlit, at the edge of a street. Piero staggered into bright white light of the electric lamp and stood blinking, suddenly feeling as if he had emerged from the Void into the real world. Eventually, he managed to clear his throat. “C-C-Can you t-t-tell m-m-me th-the way b-back to K-K-Kaldwin’s B-B-Bridge?”

            “You’re the Kaldwin’s Bridge philosopher? Joplin?”

            Piero blinked. “Um. Y-Y-Yes?”

            “You’re under arrest under suspicion of kidnapping.”

            “ _What?_ ”

~

            Callista was saying something. Piero could see her lips moving, and he could also hear sounds passing from her lips, but it was difficult for him to ascribe meaning to them. A cotton veil seemed to have dropped between him and the rest of the world. As soon as he could be certain that the Empress was safe, it had become surprisingly difficult to interpret the signals being sent to his brain. Even after the report that Emily had been found safely, the Watch had bundled him into a temporary cell, and he had hardly had the necessary mental resources to object.

            He was not certain how long he had been held in custody, as he had spent a great deal of however long the time it was fading in and out of consciousness. He thought he had heard Emily’s indignant voice, but it had risen high and piping and then become drawn-out and strange until he put his hands over his ears and stopped listening. Eventually, one of the officers of the Watch came in and said something incomprehensible; Piero surmised that he was intended to follow and did so.

            Corvo and Callista were waiting for him with Emily, who was no longer wearing her raincoat. Her white dress was splashed with green up to the waist, and Piero cringed slightly at the expression on Callista’s face. “I’m s-s-s-sorry,” he mumbled. And although the roaring in his ears had faded in the past few minutes, he still could not comprehend the meaning of the sounds; he was not entirely certain he wanted to be able to either.

            Corvo was speaking as well, now, and Piero could not read the expressions passing across his face. He reached for Piero’s shoulder, and Piero flinched back automatically. “Oh, n-n-no, there might b-be, um, krust acid,” he managed. Then, “I’m s-s-sorry,” again.

            “Okay, that’s _enough_.” Piero sagged with relief at the sound of Anton’s voice. A large hand was laid gently between his shoulder blades. “Your Grace, Attano, Miss Curnow. As the Royal Physician, I’ll be taking the Royal Tutor away now.”

            Piero’s eyes were actually fluttering shut; all he was able to focus on was the warmth of Anton’s hand at his back. His knees wobbled, and then he was staggering backwards. The ground beneath his feet seemed to pitch up like the deck of a ship. Anton’s strong arms caught him, one of them sliding around his waist and propping him up. Piero managed to get his feet under him, but he had to lean against Anton to stay upright. “Oh dear,” he murmured. “I-I’m afraid y-y-you’ll be c-c-contaminated.”

            “Fuck that,” Anton told him, and the arm at his waist tightened. “There, you see?” he said in the general direction of Callista and Corvo.  “He can’t even stand up. It’s a miracle his fevers haven’t started up again.”

            Corvo leaned forward, apparently taking a closer look. This time, Piero was able to understand him when his eyes widened and he said only, “I’m sorry, Piero. I’ll leave him to you, Master Sokolov.”

            The next moment, the world blurred into incomprehensibility again. No matter how hard he tried to focus, he could not seem to keep track of the multiplicity of sensations crowding into his brain, and he was forced to take them one at a time. Anton’s hand beneath his waist, guiding him. The swaying motion of a carriage. The stinging pain in the back of his hand. The familiar cobbles outside Kaldwin’s Bridge beneath his feet. Somehow, through the weird haze that had overtaken him, he managed to count footsteps—three from the carriage to the door, and on the last he nearly fell. Only Anton’s arms saved him from a nasty tumble.

            “Careful,” Anton’s voice rumbled in his ear; Piero sagged against him. “D’you think you can make it up the stairs?”

            Piero weighed his options slowly. It was difficult for him to tell, as it required diverting a number of resources to assess the state of his knees. “Um,” he hazarded.

            “Let’s take the elevator.”

            That did seem to be a reasonable proposal. Piero faded out again; the next thing he was aware of was the low hum of the trans powering the elevator and the stomach-swooping sensation of its acceleration and deceleration.

            “Good thing I got the hot water piped into the bathroom.” Anton put a careful hand on the back of Piero’s neck, steering him out of the elevator and across the hallway into the tiny bathroom. “Get your clothes off.” Steam began to billow out of the iron faucet that had been fixed above the wooden tub as Anton turned the handle.

            The temperature in the bathroom must be quite warm, as sweat was standing out on Anton’s forehead and his cheeks were flushed red, but Piero was shivering. Perhaps the soaked clothes he was wearing were working against him. Slowly, he began to peel off his shirt, his belt, his socks. His trousers were the last to go; he dropped everything onto the floor in a little heap and then stared down at it, wondering if he ought to fold it up and move it somewhere.

            “Up you get,” Anton’s voice told him, and Anton’s arms steered him in the direction of the steaming tub. He _was_ warmer now that his clothing had been removed, he noted. Gingerly, he put a foot into the water. It was hot, but not unbearably so. He paused, wavering, and Anton’s hands beneath his elbows helped him sit awkwardly. It was difficult to keep his eyes open, although when Anton lifted a bucket from the floor and poured a generous helping of hot water over his head, the shock of it did jerk him momentarily upright.

            “Don’t fall asleep on me just yet,” Anton rumbled in amusement. “Just a moment, I don’t want you to drown in your tub after everything you’ve been through.”

            A rustle of cloth behind him was followed by a grunt and muttered curse, and then he felt Anton’s knee knock gently against his back. “Should probably get a larger tub if this is likely to become a habit,” Anton said meditatively as he lowered himself in after Piero.

            A wild laugh sputtered its way out of Piero’s lungs. “I assure you, I am not planning on this particular adventure ever again.”

            “Well, you weren’t planning on this one either.” Anton folded his arms across Piero’s chest, pressing his lips against Piero’s spine. “Fuck, you worried me. Anyway, I meant bathing together. Eugh,” he finished, “you taste awful.”

            The warm water was almost soporific; Piero’s eyelids were drooping already. Still, he managed a faint rejoinder. “I apologize that I am not to your liking after being half-drowned in the sewers and nearly killed in an explosion.”

            Anton’s arms tightened a fraction around him. “Explosion?”

            “Oh, w-well, we ran afoul of s-some river pirates,” Piero explained. “I n-needed a distraction to get Emily away from them. Fortunately, they were carrying some r-r-red f-f-fuming. Well. And s-s-some.” He could not even force the words out, suddenly. The memory of the hot force compressing his chest was vivid, and he could not understand how he had had the cool, clinical bravery necessary to evoke it in the instant. It was as if a stranger had been piloting his body, not him, Piero Joplin. All he had thought of was that Emily needed to be gotten to safety.

            “By the Lady,” muttered Anton. “I am never letting you out of my sight again.”

            “That may pose some d-difficulty.”

            “I’ll work with it.” Something soft caressed Piero’s back, and he tipped his head back with a soft sigh.

            “That’s nice,” he mumbled.

            “Good, I’m going to have to do it a lot. _Bozjemoi_ , but your skin is _ingrained_ with this shit.” The sponge in his hand described circles on Piero’s back, the repetitive motion soothing, although after a moment, it grew rather more vigorous, and Piero winced.

            “Please do not strip off my skin,” he told Anton.           

            “Did I mention that it’s ingrained?” Anton retorted, but his hand gentled slightly. Piero drowsed, slipping into a state halfway between sleep and waking. The water turned dark with dirt around him, then cold. Then it drained away, and clear water took its place. Anton’s fingers kneaded at his head, digging in at the temples with a strong but not unpleasant pressure, drawing a groan out of Piero. The other man made a speculative noise and then spoke. “How would you like to be bald?”

            Piero clapped his hands to his head. “Not in the least. Please do not remove my hair.”

            “Only I think it would be easier to decontaminate your head that way,” Anton sighed. “All right, move your hands, I won’t shave it off.” Piero felt fingertips brush his wrist and then Anton hissed in shock. “By the Void, what happened to your hand?”

            Somehow, in all the confusion, Piero had almost forgotten the dull ache up the back of his hand and along his wrist. He must have lost the makeshift bandage somewhere along the line, and he was hazily surprised that the pain had not made itself more insistently known, but then, he was forced to admit that his mind was no longer functioning at anything like full capacity. “K-K-Krust acid,” he managed, and heard Anton suck in his breath in shock.

            “Damn it, Piero, why didn’t you tell me right away?” he demanded, and Piero instinctively flinched from the loudness of his voice.

            “I w-was s-somewhat preoccupied. The injury has been cleaned, at least.”

            Anton sighed. “It’ll have to be cleaned again,” he said. “There’s no telling the kinds of things that have gotten on it in this tub alone.” Gently, he turned the affected appendage over. “The area of the burn is not too large, but the location is troubling.”

            Right across the back of Piero’s wrist. Piero’s mind shot to the tough scar tissue lining Anton’s upper arm, the tightening of the skin around it and the corresponding loss of mobility. Difficulty in bending the wrist—how often did he need to bend it in the course of his daily endeavors? His mind buzzed around, incapable of landing on a conclusion.

            “I cannot tell yet if it will scar, but certainly it will need to be cleaned and dressed,” Anton told him, then, perhaps feeling the sudden tremor that ran through Piero’s chest and arm, tightened his own arm about Piero’s torso. “Don’t worry, I’m the Royal Physician. I’ll fix it.” The warmth of Anton’s words and the warmth of his torso at Piero’s back both combined to suppress the nervous tremor. “Better if you keep your arm out of the tub until I’ve finished scrubbing you off, though,” Anton continued meditatively.

            Tiredly, Piero propped his elbow against the side of the tub to keep his arm out of the water and let Anton work. They went through another two full tubs of clean water before Anton pronounced himself satisfied and turned his attention back to the acid burn. “Hmmm,” he said. “This is probably going to hurt.”

            Piero, whose head and back were throbbing and stinging from the vigor with which they had been cleaned, gave a tired sigh and let his head drop back against Anton. “Everything hurts,” he responded. “I do not think it will hurt as badly as the initial injury did.”

            “I’ve never actually had a krust acid burn,” Anton said as he took Piero’s arm gently. “Bad, are they?”

            “Agonizing,” Piero whispered, and Anton kissed the top of his head.

            “By the Void, I’m sorry I suggested the lesson,” he said, his voice shaking ever-so-slightly.

            “Well. It is over now,” Piero returned, compressing his lips against the pain as Anton began to clean the injury. He shuddered, because it _did_ hurt, the secondary stinging running up his arm and then the ache that his brain had shut out niggling out into the forefront of his awareness. Somehow, he did not quite want Anton to see how _badly_ it was hurting him, though, foolish as that was. The Royal Physician would be able to tell, surely, and would know that it was the acid that was responsible, not himself. Piero shut his eyes miserably, and suddenly there was cool ointment spread across the affected area; suddenly Anton’s practiced hands were winding a bandage around the spot. Never before had Piero been so grateful for the loss of a slice of his life.

            “There,” Anton said, patting his shoulder with a sort of proprietary affection. “I will want to keep a close eye on that as it heals. For now, though—my prescription is sleep. Twelve hours or so should go far to putting you back together.”

            “Sleep,” Piero mumbled. “Yes, I th-think—that s-sounds—”

            He reached for the side of the tub to pull himself to his feet; he succeeded in getting his feet under him before the trembling of his muscles threatened to collapse him once more. Anton hurriedly put an arm under his shoulder. “Careful, I’ve got you.”

            “Yes,” Piero agreed, leaning against him. “B-Bed very much now, I believe.”

            “Let me dry you off first,” Anton rumbled, and there was a momentary struggle as he tried to reach for the towel while continuing to support Piero, whose legs were decidedly not capable of standing by themselves at this juncture. Eventually, however, he succeeded at snagging it, not without a grunt of pain, and wrapped it around Piero and began to rub him down. Piero’s knees soon began to wobble, and Anton made a considering noise. “All right, you’re dry enough,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if the sheets get a little damp.”

            A moment or two more of stumbling and Piero was being tucked into a warm bed, the covers drawn up to his chin. “Anton?” he murmured, and a large hand was placed upon his head. “Stay with me?”

            “Always.”

~

            Emily hovered quietly just outside of the kitchen door. Of course, she could easily enter at any time, but one of the problems with being the Empress now was that people got awfully quiet around her, much more so than they used to. She could learn a lot more interesting things if she didn’t immediately let people know she was there. Besides, she wanted to practice being more like Corvo. Right now, she was listening to a heated discussion between Anton’s cook, whose name was Mildred, and the new young kitchen maid, who was only a few years older than Emily herself.

            “I saw the two of ’em through the door—both naked,” the maid said, in a hushed voice.

            “What’s so surprising about that? Sokolov will bed anything.”

            “But they weren’t fucking. Both of them naked, in that tub together, and I swear by the Void Sokolov was murmuring something soft into Joplin’s ear as he washed him. Just washing him, nothing else.”

            “I don’t believe it,” Mildred said stoutly. “Sokolov’s Tyvian, you know.”

            “Well, I saw it,” the maid protested stubbornly, then sighed happily. “Do you think they’re married?”

            Mildred made a scoffing noise. “That’d be the day. Sokolov, married! Besides, they’re both men, you know.”

            “Oh, well, the Abbey mayn’t like it, but I don’t think they could say much if the Royal Physician wanted to marry a man.”

            Emily thought about this, nodding. It seemed sensible enough to her. You married someone if you were in love with them, didn’t you? If Master Sokolov and Master Joplin were in love, they should definitely be married. She poked her head around the door. “If the Abbey won’t let them, I’ll tell them they have to,” she said, with a grin. “If they do want to be married, I mean.”

            Mildred, who was somewhat used to Emily appearing at odd times, merely bobbed a curtsey. The maid gave a sudden squeak and threw her apron over her face. “Y-Y-Your Grace!”

            “How do you know if people are married?” Emily asked curiously.

            “W-Well, um.” The maid seemed somewhat nonplussed. “I suppose it’s different for different people,” she hedged finally.

            “That’s not very helpful,” Emily said, pulling a face. “Anyway, I’ve got to go up and see Master Joplin to thank him. If I can find out if they’re married, I’ll let you know.”

            “Here, now—” Mildred was saying something as if she was about to stop Emily, but stopped in some confusion. Emily took the opportunity to dash up the well-known steps from the kitchen toward the upper floors.

            “Do you suppose they’ll mind?” she heard the maid asking doubtfully.

            “Oh, Sokolov minds nothing that the little miss does,” sighed the cook. “He never has. I just hope Master Attano and Mistress Curnow are of like minds, depending what she sees.”

            Emily rapped briskly on the bedroom door, waited until she heard a frustrated, “Come in!” and peeped around the door handle. Anton was sitting up in his bed in the same shirt he’d been wearing earlier when he took Master Joplin away, though he’d stripped off his jacket and vest. “Oh, it’s you, Emily,” he said as she came in. “Now’s not a good time.”

            “I just wanted to say thank you to Master Joplin for saving my life. And also because it was a very interesting and informative lesson.” The lump in the bed beside Anton stirred slightly. “No, don’t you dare wake up,” he told it. “Nothing is happening.” Then he looked back up at Emily. “I’ll let him know, but the Royal Physician’s decree is that he needs _uninterrupted_ rest.”

            Emily giggled at the way he didn’t seem to be just addressing her. “Sorry to bother you,” she told them. “I’ll make sure to come back tomorrow.” She turned towards the door.

            “Emily,” Anton said, and she turned back.

            “Um, yes?”

            “I’m glad you’re all right,” he told her seriously. “You and Master Joplin both did extremely well.”

            She smiled. “I used to think Master Joplin’s lessons were boring,” she confided. “But I think maybe this one was a little bit _too_ exciting.”

            “Sometimes it’s difficult to find the middle ground,” Anton replied, with a smirk. “Now shoo. Tell Corvo he’s not to bother Master Joplin until I say he can.”

            “Yes, Anton.”

            She clattered down the stairs again into the kitchen, where the cook had gone back to preparing a meal, and the maid was helping her. Both looked up when Emily came in.

“They were in bed together asleep,” she reported. “Well, Master Joplin was asleep. I’m not sure if Master Sokolov is planning to go to sleep or not.”

            The maid’s face lit up. “Was Master Sokolov wearing his clothes?”

            “Alexi!” exclaimed Mildred.

            “Oh, yes, most of them,” Emily replied. “Is that important?”

            “See, I told you they were married!” Alexi exclaimed, turning triumphantly to the cook. “No one sleeps in the same bed with their clothes on if they’re not married.”

            Mildred gave a longsuffering sigh. “I can see you two will get on famously,” she said. “Well, Your Grace, if you have time to stay, there’s some pastries as need to be put into the oven. I’m sure Master Sokolov won’t mind if you sample a few yourself.”

            “Yes, please!” Emily exclaimed.   Technically, Corvo had said he would take her to Kaldwin’s Bridge to thank Master Joplin, after she’d changed and bathed and convinced him that she was really feeling fine, but she didn’t think he’d mind waiting a bit for her to help out with some pastries. He’d said she probably wouldn’t have to do much for the next few days anyway, so, although it hadn’t been pleasant to be nearly kidnapped again, overall the adventure had been pretty enjoyable.

            She grinned at Alexi, who had moved aside to let her have some room at the counter. “You really think they’re married?”

            “Definitely,” Alexi grinned back.

            “I hope so,” Emily confided. “It’s supposed to make people happy, right?”

            “Well, my mother and father seem happy.”

            Emily nodded. “I thought so,” she said firmly. “I’ll have to see about getting Corvo married as well, then. Do you think he would like Callista?”

            “Tell me about Callista,” said Alexi, and as the two of them fell into an eager discussion of the possible merits and downsides of such a marriage, Emily smiled. She was warm and safe. Thinking about the way Anton had looked at the lump beside him in the bed, she was pretty sure Master Joplin was as well.

            “Thank you,” she whispered toward the ceiling. She’d tell him properly tomorrow. For now, there were pastries to be made and eaten.


End file.
